Dinner Rolls

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INGREDIENTS

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2¼ teaspoons dry active yeast

⅓ cup lukewarm water

¼ teaspoon sugar (7 teaspoons more later)

2½ tablespoons melted butter (2 tablespoons more later)

½ cup milk, lukewarm

½ teaspoon salt

7 teaspoons sugar

2¼ cups flour (2 more tablespoons later)

1½ tablespoons flour

no-stick spray

2 tablespoons melted butter

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SPECIAL UTENSILS

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electric beater

8″ round casserole dish

bench scraper/chopper or long non-serrated knife

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Makes 15 rolls. Takes 2 hours 35 minutes.

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PREPARATION

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Add yeast and lukewarm water to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Sprinkle ¼ teaspoon sugar on top. Let sit for 10 minutes or until bubbles. Add 2½ tablespoons melted butter, milk, salt, and 7 teaspoons sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with spatula until salt and sugar dissolve. Let cool to room temperature.

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Add yeast mixture to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Gradually add 2¼ cups flour while mixing with electric beater set on medium. Mix until a slightly sticky dough ball forms. Dust flat surface with 1½ tablespoons flour. Remove dough ball to flat surface. Knead for 5 minutes until dough is smooth and elastic. Spray large mixing bowl with no-stick spray. Add dough ball to large mixing bowl. Rotate dough until covered with spray. Cover bowl with towel. Let sit for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.

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Push down on dough. Roll dough into a log 15″ long and 1″ wide. Use bench scraper to cut log into 15 pieces. Shape 15 pieces into smooth balls. Spray casserole dish with no-stick spray. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add smooth dough balls to casserole dish. Cover with towel and let sit for 1 hour or until fluffy. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until tops of rolls turn golden brown. Brush tops of rolls with 2 tablespoons melted butter.

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TIDBITS

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1) Doing dishes makes the kitchen clean, which makes you happy.

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2) But, pondering the infinite brings enlightenment.

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3) What will you chose?

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4) May I suggest alternating 5-minute bursts of each activity?

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5) While achieving enlightenment, I had the following stream of consciousness.

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6) Can you have a stream of consciousness while asleep or even unconscious?

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7) Unconscious is a hard word to spell.

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8) You can see that I spelled it right.

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9) You’ll have to take my word for it that I spelled it right on the very first try. Go me.

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10) Somehow this segues into how we developed before birth.

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11) Prehistoric peoples believed we started out as very tiny version of the baby that would eventually pop out of mama.

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12) How do we know this? Go to the Courgette Library in Bordeaux, France. Find the research department and ask to see the ground breaking Greatest Texts of Prehistory by Farine du Ble.

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13) Nowadays, culinary biologists say that we began as a single, undifferentiated cell.

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14) This cell doubled into two slightly unlike* cells.

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15) * = I used my thesaurus to come up with a different word for different.

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16) This doubling process kept going until we had nearly 15 slightly dissimilar cells like in the above photo.

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17) Eventually this doubling process stops. We don’t increase twofold the day before birth.

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18) But what if this repetitive course continues after birth?

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19) Eventually, we’d get as big as Uranus.

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20) We’d also possess a staggering number of specialized cells.

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21) We’d most likely quite sport an impressive number of super-hero skills.

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22) Which we’d need if we were truly as enormous as Uranus.

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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.